Spitzer speaks for Kerry

Dispatches from the Democratic National Convention

By

KathieO'Donnell

BOSTON (CBS.MW) -- New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he expects the Bush administration's failure to grasp the gravity of corporate misdeeds early on to pay off for John Kerry and the Democrats when investors vote in November.

"The party that can stand up and say, 'We will take care of the security of the marketplace by enforcing the rule of law,' I think, will get a certain benefit from investors who will say, 'There is the party that understands how the markets should be run,'" Spitzer told CBS MarketWatch in an interview during the Democratic National Convention Wednesday.

That party is the Democratic Party, he added, criticizing the Bush administration for its initial "complacency" and "lack of vigor" on issues of corporate failure. Spitzer, a Democrat himself, specifically faulted former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt for a lack of aggressiveness.

"It is not the way the SEC ever should have been run, and it speaks to the Bush administration's early, abject failure to comprehend the magnitude of what was going on," he said. "Harvey Pitt, I think, will go down as the poster child for the Bush administration's failure to address these issues properly."

When asked for a reaction to Spitzer's statements early Thursday, Pitt, now chief executive of global consulting firm Kalorama Partners in Washington, D.C., declined to comment.

"Given both its source and obvious political content, I wouldn't dignify it with a comment," Pitt said.

As for his own political ambitions, Spitzer wouldn't rule out a run for governor of New York.

"I make no bones about the fact that I'm thinking about it, but it is something that I'll deal with later on," he said, adding that the paramount issue now "is and should be the election of John Kerry."

Diplomatic daughter

We caught up with Alexandra Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate's daughter who made a splash under the bright lights of the international press at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year with a revealing black dress, and asked her about another high-profile daughter with a knack for embarrassing photos.

"We don't like to do comparisons" with Jenna and Barbara Bush, the 30-year-old told CBS MarketWatch, including her younger sister Vanessa in the diplomacy. "We like to respect their rights," the aspiring filmmaker added of the president's twins.

Looks like we'll have to wait for jibjab.com to give us the lowdown.

Courting the tech industry

John Kerry, who earlier this year blasted "Benedict Arnold" CEOs who moved jobs offshore, eventually will need to sit down with high-tech executives and offer them some details on his trade policies, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzalez told CBS MarketWatch in an interview.

"He's going to have to spend a good amount of time talking to high-tech leadership, getting a better understanding by them of his policies and his beliefs," Gonzalez said. He added that trade-related issues, including the offshoring jobs, are also a major concern of American voters.

"We need to have a national dialogue about how to approach" these issues, he said.

In 2000, the Democratic ticket of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman featured politicians with track records on technology-related issues. Neither Kerry nor running mate John Edwards has similar credentials.

Gonzalez says he's not worried about that because Kerry, in past visits to Silicon Valley, demonstrated that he understood the importance of the technology industry.

Retired Air Force General Backs Kerry

Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak said John Kerry has the potential to be "one of the great commanders in chief we've ever had." McPeak said he met with Kerry before endorsing him.

"I found that he's a very, very common sense guy (with) a deep understanding of these problems," McPeak said, adding that Kerry's father was a diplomat and the candidate spent a lot of time overseas. "He's not a novice in international affairs, these are not simple problems, they are complicated problems. They require a kind of nuanced thinking, a nuanced approach. And he's capable of that kind of intellectual depth."

McPeak, in an interview with CBS MarketWatch from the convention floor Thursday, said the United States needs to increase troop strength in Iraq.

"I think so, but I don't know where we're going to get it from because we're pretty badly stretched right now," he said. "My rough estimate is we need about double the size of the force we have in there, because if we don't get a hold of the security situation, we can't do anything else."

The security situation that the United States has created in Iraq is "deplorable," McPeak said.

"The first experience that the Iraqi citizens had with freedom was looting, was rioting," he said.

MoveOn calls on Bush to apologize for "July Surprise"

MoveOn Political Action Committee Director Eli Pariser called on President George W. Bush to apologize for orchestrating a "July Surprise" in the War on Terror to undermine John Kerry's nomination speech Thursday night.

Pakistan arrested Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al-Qaida suspect in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, according to the Associated Press. Ghailani was arrested with at least 15 others, the AP reported Thursday.

MoveOn said an article in the New Republic earlier this month cited Pakistani officials who said the Bush administration pressured them to arrange al-Qaida captures during the Democratic National Convention. According to MoveOn, Bush responded to the article by saying he had "no ambition whatsoever to use (the War on Terror) as a political issue."

"We're always glad when (al-Qaida) terrorists are captured," Pariser said. "But we can't have our president subordinating the war against terrorism to the needs of his reelection campaign."

Chamber of Commerce slams Dems on environment

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday called the Democratic Party's opposition to storing the nation's nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain and "refusal" to come up with specific energy alternatives "a serious failure to address an urgent national need."

"The Democratic Party's preference to keep radioactive materials scattered throughout the country at nuclear power plants is alarming," William Kovacs, the chamber's vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. "Without a safe, central site we're effectively making ourselves sitting ducks for terrorists."

Democratic delegates in Boston approved a national platform that opposes storing the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, while stating that the party is committed to achieving energy independence, according to the chamber's statement.

"Without a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste from electric utilities, nuclear energy -- and the 20 percent of our electricity supply it represents -- is at risk," Kovacs said. "Such a policy impairs rather than advances our energy independence."

$3 beer, with the glass

The legions of security personnel apparently didn't think of every contingency. On Wednesday night, a bar just a few feet from one VIP entrance through the steel barriers surrounding the FleetCenter was serving its usual special: pints of Molson for $3, and patrons got to walk out with the glass.

Molson (MOLA), of course, just agreed to merge with Adolph Coors
RKY,
whose chairman is running for the nomination to a U.S. Senate seat in Colorado -- as a Republican.

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